What is Pharmacology?

Pharmacology is the study of the biological actions of drugs and chemicals, the ways they work and their use in treating illness. It involves not only scientific experiments on chemical compounds which are, or may in future be, used as drugs, but also concerns itself with disease processes. A drug is any chemical which modifies the function of living tissue. The search for a new drug may be based on the knowledge of the nature of a particular disease, whereas knowledge of the mechanisms of drug action may lead in turn to a greater understanding of the disease process. An increasingly important aspect of drug discovery is the identification of new molecular targets for drug action. The science of pharmacology is closely linked with chemistry, microbiology, molecular biology, physiology, and toxicology.

The science of pharmacology developed in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries as scientists and physiologists began to study naturally-occurring drugs which had been in use for centuries, e.g. digitalis (from foxglove), atropine (from deadly nightshade), morphine (from the opium poppy). Many of the basic principles of pharmacology were established with studies on such substances. Some of these drugs are still in use today, but the majority are now synthetic. Research carried out in universities has provided many important leads for the pharmaceutical industry to develop new drugs.